Alamar

Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

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Users say

Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

A fresh-faced toddler and his bashful, semi-estranged father trade hushed life lessons in this gorgeous docu-fiction from Mexican director Pedro González-Rubio. Filmed with a skeleton crew (Rubio as cinematographer alongside a single sound man) in the rickety, stilted shacks surrounding the atoll reef of Quintana Roo off the south-east coast of Mexico, this rugged, tranquil film chronicles a rite-of-passage fishing trip the pair takes before the boy is whisked off to Italy with his mother.

At first their bond is tacit and undemonstrative, but through various father-son activities – house-painting, cooking, descaling fish – you gradually get a sense of the profound mutual affection they share. Rubio frames the central drama against a sublime natural backdrop, capturing a mesmerising elemental harmony between man and beast. Moving but never sentimental, ambient but rigorously focused, this is an assured, refreshingly simple film where the dramas and responsibilities of parenthood exist inside a bubble of blissed-out tropicalia.